Buzz about Google's moves into digital music reached a fever pitch today following reports of the search engine giant's interest in buying Napster. But Google played down the reports in advance of its earnings call later today.

Citing unnamed sources, The New York Post reported today that Google has been pushing to form an alliance with Napster rather than build its own online music store. That alliance, a signal that Google sees the future of digital music in subscriptions as opposed to the individual, à la carte downloads of industry front-runner iTunes, could lead to an acquisition of Napster, the Post reported.

But a Google spokeswoman today told MP3.com News that the company has "no plans to acquire Napster, nor do we have plans to develop a music store at this time."

The spokeswoman pointed to Google's recent addition of music-specific search results when users search for artists, songs, or album titles. The results include links to third-party music services like iTunes, Rhapsody, Amazon, Buy.com, Best Buy, eMusic, CD Universe, Wal-Mart, and MSN Music.

Napster has approximately 500,000 subscribers to its "all you can eat" download service but trails far behind RealNetworks' Rhapsody, which reported 1.3 million subscribers as of last October.

A Napster spokeswoman declined comment, citing a quiet period ahead of its earnings announcement on February 8.

The reports come in the aftermath of Napster's layoff of 10 employees last week and heightened speculation about Napster's finances and chances of survival.

Napster has gone through several incarnations since digital music pioneer Shawn Fanning created it in 1999 as a college student. Fanning's Napster went on to become a gigantic-sized thorn in the side of the music business and became synonymous with peer-to-peer (P2P) free music.

Facing a slew of lawsuits from the music industry, the company went bankrupt and sold the Napster brand name in 2003 to CD-burning software maker Roxio, which had also bought the Pressplay digital music service from Vivendi Universal. Roxio eventually divested itself of the software business, bought the Napster name, and rebranded Pressplay as Napster.

The Post report also comes a week after a prediction from a prominent Wall Street firm that Google will get into the digital music game. Bear Stearns issued a client note last week maintaining its "outperform" rating on Google and saying the company is looking to challenge iTunes, Apple's dominant digital music service with more than 80 percent market share.

"We believe that Google is in the midst of creating its own iTunes competitor, which we've dubbed 'Google Tunes,'" analyst Robert Peck wrote in a client note issued last week. "We think this is a logical step, now that the nascent Google Video product has been introduced." Google has owned the googlemusic.com domain since 2003.

Despite the denials, the speculation over a Google music deal will likely continue, particularly given Google's recent investments and acquisitions.

The company recently bought a 5 percent stake in AOL for $1 billion and ponied up $1.14 billion earlier this month to buy dMarc, a company that automatically inserts adverts in radio broadcasts.

The reports today sent shares of Napster skyrocketing 50 percent in early trading. The shares have dropped a bit since then but are still up 29 percent on the day at $4.04.